Crown Capital Management-stephkristenie

Geothermal heat is keeping Habitat for Humanity’s new home in North Pole toasty at half the cost of a regular water boiler, delivering savings directly to the family who moved into the house in January.

Now, the non-profit has another geothermal project on the table. With high heating fuel prices in the Interior, and a federal tax rebate in place until 2016, is geothermal a viable heating source for Interior Alaska on a large scale?

A house delivering savings

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization that constructs homes for families in need. The family then buys the house from the organization, paying it back on a 20-year loan with no interest.

Part of the organization’s building standards are that the costs to live there cannot exceed 30 percent of a family’s gross income. “The heating part of it is huge,” executive director Jay Pruce said. “That’s what puts (families) in sub-standard housing.”

Geothermal heat pumps, also known as ground-source heat pumps, work by extracting heat from the ground through a closed-loop system of pipes called a heat-exchange system. The systems can be installed either horizontally or vertically in the ground, and rely on electricity to run. For a house to be outfitted with geothermal, it needs to have either forced air or radiant heat systems.

Ground-source heat pumps used to heat homes are different from geothermal power derived from underground hot springs such as that used at the Chena Hot Springs reso...

Crown Capital Eco Management works with government bodies, international entities, private sectors and other non-governmental organizations in providing extensive information to the public, media and policymakers that are involved in addressing environmental issues and sustainable initiatives in a worldwide scale. Though our group does not personally conduct research, we analyze and review both recent and old data on technical and socio-economic sectors that are relevant to our field, which is environment preservation.
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Although Crown cooperates with various organizations, we maintain our being an independent body, free from control of any particular government, state or institution and unimpaired by their own respective interests.

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A long-term responsibility of preserving resources for future generations that cover economic and environmental factors. Sustainability enables the environment to be productive and diverse enough to host humanity along with other living organism through effectively managing human impact on the ecosystem based on information provided experts.
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